Tuesday, March 1, 2011

I hope you all had a great weekend! Both Ashley and I spent ours in Dallas at NCA Nationals. Ash is a competitive cheer coach and just happens to be the coach to two of my girls :-) We had a blast. It was long though and I am surprised Ashley is still walking. Our gym took home 5 National titles with over 750 teams there... Woohoo! Way to go Ash!

I started this project last week and finished it today so I thought I would share. I originally saw Miss Traci's Ballard inspired cafe shelves long ago and fell in love. I just didn't know where I could put one. However... My new curtains brought me a bit of inspiration :-)

Here is how mine turned out...

Now I will kind of show you how I did it!

For this shelf I used a 4 ft 1x10" piece of pine from Lowe's. I used my miter saw to cut it a few inches short of the space I was filling. I think mine was 36".

There are many brackets at Lowe's and Home Depot. These were the ones I chose to go with. I loved the size of them. They are big and a bit longer than most of the others. They were about $6 a piece and I decided to use 3 on my shelf. Since I was just building one I thought it would give it a bit more presence on the wall... Know what I mean?

I used a little Gorilla Wood Glue on the 1x10...

And attached my brackets using my brad nailer. Can I just say that this might be my very favorite tool?? It would definitely be a toss up with the saw and hot glue gun but it's for sure in the running. Mine was only $44 at Northern Tool and it makes me so happy :-)

There it is attached... Like 46 seconds later.... Whoop!

At this point I had my shelf built and needed to add the trim. I used my miter saw for this part but I do realize that many of you don't have one. Traci gives an awesome tutorial on using a cheap hand saw and even cheaper miter box to make your own HERE. Super easy I promise!! Check it out!

My final step after trim was painting it. I also shantied it up a bit using a 3M sanding block with 120 grit. Once my edges were sanded I used a little stain to make them stand out a bit more. You just use a foam brush to apply your stain to your sanded edges and use an old t-shirt or cloth to wipe of the extra.

I hung my shelf up and added a locker basket with a couple of towels. I was so excited to find those at a decent price!! I love the old antique ones but not for $30 a pop. I got mine on Amazon here...

See the shantied edge??

I then added another recent revamp to finish it off for now. I know I want something else up there but that is in the works :-) For now... Here it is.

And I also seriously need to get my dh to show me how to use our brad nailer. I've got a beautiful frame all cut, but I can't bring myself to mess it up trying to assemble it without a little instruction first.